Exploring the world of baking

Saturday, April 13, 2013

I´ve tried to make marshmallows before, but they didn´t come out quite like they should have. And I´m not a friend of raw eggs on my food, so I was very excited to see that Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafita provided me with a recipe without any eggs at all!
The only ingridiens are gelatin, sugar, water, corn syrup, salt and vanilla extract. The marshmallows were fairly easy to make, you just habe to be quick in the end. After putting the batter into the pan to try I couldn´t resist to lick the spoons - OH MY GOD!
In the morning I crept quietly into the kitchen, carefully not to wake my husband, cut the marshmallows and dusted them with sugar. Then I ate the first one. I´ve never had a marshmallow that tasted this awesome. I instantly swore never to buy any again, I´ll always make them myself from now on! And they look good, too:

For my brothers birthday I made the "Sweet and salty cake" from Baked new frontiers in baking.

My brother loves chocolate and caramel so it was the perfect cake for him.

The recipe advices you to use 3 8-inch cake pans, but it was quit a lot of dough, so I used 3 10-inch pans! I used only half of the ganache frosting to create a thin layer like it´s showing in the book. My family was thrilled with this very, very rich and tasty cake. This a cake only for special occasions, there is so much butter, shortening, sugar,...in it.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Today we´re celebrating my boss´ birthday, so I started yesterday with Peggy Porschens Limoncello cake. The recipe is quite straightforward. The batter is easy to mix together (especially with my new mixing machine:) ) and smells very lemon-y. After the layers are out of the oven they´re soaked with lemon syrup, which is made out of lemon jucie, sugar and lemon liqour. I used lemon-mint juice instead of the liqour because I couldn´t find any at my local supermarket. I had to make the buttercream 2 and a half of the quantity given, because it wasn´t enough to fill the layers and coat the cake. I´m not really good at coating a cake, so it doesn´t look even close to Peggy Porschens version. But I hope it will taste good nevertheless.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Today I was feeling adventureous. When I first saw the recipe for this brownie in Baked explorations I was thinking "What the hell? Salt on and in a brownie?". It has a caramal filling, and as I´m really scared of making caramel (I´ve NEVER succeeded in making it - it always goes wrong), which gave me a push in it´s direction. I had all the stuff I needed at home, so I could start right away.

The recipe sounded simple enough. First make the salted caramel, than the batter. I had to make the caramel twice, because the first time I accidently used double quantity of the cream. The second batch smelled a little weird - but tasted great!

Then it said to melt the chocolate and the butter, put the sugar in and stir until dissolved. My sugar was very reluctant to dissolve into the mixture, so after 15 minutes of stirring I gave up. I just continued with the next step - putting the eggs and then the flour, cocoa and salt in. The batter looked very nice and gooey. I put half of it into the prepared pan, then the cramel and then batter again. After 40m (10m more that given in the recipe) in the oven it smelled very chocolaty in my flat. I let it cool down while I prepared my lunch. After I finished eating I cut a piece of slightly warm brownie and sat down in front of the TV. Time to try.

It was AMAZING!

I´ve never tasted a brownie even close to this. You can taste the salt, but not in a weird way. It compliments the chocolate and caramel really well. It has the perfect texture and everything. Now I´ll have to put the rest of the pan away or I´ll be seduced to eat it all until the last crump.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Today I tried another recipe from "Baked elements" - the good morning sunshine bar. It seems quite unspectacular - Just plain cereal, corn syrup, peanuts, peanutbutter, sugar, salt, vanilla extract and a little chocolate on top. And it doesn´t even go in the oven. As we have no corn syrup in Austria, I raided the internet for alternatives and found out, that you can use sugar syrup (75ml water boiled with 225g sugar) instead. I´m not sure if that has the same texture and everything but I had to try.

I left out the chocolate because I forgot to buy some. Yes, I know. How could I forget chocolate?
Because I made the sugar syrup, I left out the additional 1 cup of sugar, but put in a little more of the syrup. The peanuts are oilfree, handroasted ones my mother brought me from africa. The bars came together very quickly. The result looks...modest:

BUT it tastes amazing!!! It´s like peanut heaven! The cereal is only half chrunchy, due to the syrup, but the peanuts gives it extra crunch on they´re own and it´s just awesome! I can see myself making these bars to take with me and eat on the go=)

I can only agree with the author of this book: The world does seem like a better place while eating this.

My first attempt from "Baked elements" by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. I was looking for something to eat for breakfast. As I had overdue bananas at home, the recipe was perfect.
Here are the ingredience:
-Flour
-Sugar
-salt
-baking soda
-mashed bananas
-vegetable oil
-eggs
-whole milk
-crunchy peanut butter
-chocolate chips

I skipped the chocolate chips and used lactosefree milk to have the perfect loaf for me.
It came together easily and very quick. In the oven it took 1h 20m (10m more than given in the recipe). It smelled...awesome but strange.
When it was finished I let it coold down a bit, removed it from the pan and cut a slice of the still slighly warm bread. It was quite good. I´m not sure if I should say really good. I have mixed feelings about the peanut butter. The loaf is very soft, but still firm. And it´s very moist but not sticky. The perfect texture - very soft and chrunchy due to the peanuts.

First I want to introduce myself:
My name is Suzie, I´m a lactoseintolerant full-time educationist working with kids age 1-6 at a day care. In my sparetime I mainly sit at my sewing machine (my big love) and sew historical costumes, movie costumes or everyday clothes. Other than that I´m baking.

I love to bake. I love sweet stuff. And I that "I made that myself!" feeling.

Yesterday evening I had this familiar craving to bake again. So I made myself comfortable on the chouch and looked for inspiration in my baking books. Then I had this idea to start a blog about the things I´m making. I have no idea if anyone is interested to read this, but it gave me a big motivating push.

In my first post I want to introduce you to my rapidly growing book collection.

On the top left is "Boutique baking" by Peggy Porschen:
I looooove it! The pictures will make your mouth water! When I first flipped through it I couldn´t decide what to make first - I wanted to try everything at once. So far I made the buttermilk doghnuts (delicious!), the white chocolate cake (even more delicious), the macaroons (mhmmmmmmm...) and the Baiser (I only have the book in german, so I don´t know what they´re called in englisch...nevertheless they´re good, but I´m not a big fan on plain eggwhite-sugar confect). The book is more an advanced baking book, you´ll have to be prepared to make quite a fuss for bisquit dough, but it´s worth every step you wouldn´t usually do!

Then the´re is Lindy Smiths "Cakes to inspire and desire":
I onl made one cake out of this book so far: my wedding cake. I was shocked when I saw the prices for a plain wedding cake here in Vienna, so I tackled it myself and it came out great!
I made the topsy turvy one from the cover, only in black and bright red. This book has many beautiful cake designs, but they´re for special occasions and not for everday baking.

Then Peggy Porschen again "Cake chic":
I just got it and haven´t tried anything yet. It´s more about decorating then the actual baking process - more for special occasions, too.

Then there is "Schokolade" where I have no idea who wrote it:
A whole book about chocolate - do I need to say more?

Second row, left there is "The big book of cupcakes" by Betty Crocker:
A new book, too. Amazing cupcakes and I want to try so many of them!

"Doughnuts" by Lana Ferroni:
I´m not sure about this book yet. First I have to say, I don´t fry anything, not even doghnuts. The book has a few recipes for baked doghnuts and they´re quite good. The glazing although - I tried 6 different ones - are not really that good. Only with the honey glaze I thought "Okay, this one I could do again". The cocholate glazing is not made with cocholalte and therefor tastes only of cocoa."Miette" by Meg Ray:
Amazing pictures and a wide variety on baked goods but I read a lot of reviews that the recipes are not accurate and sometimes don´t work. Well, that´s not motivating.

Last, but definitly not least the "Baked" series from Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito:
I´m in heaven! These booksare full of feelgood bakery, mouthwatering pictures and baking tips and tricks. This is literally the first baking book ever, where I read the introductions and not only the recipes! They have a good chance of being my favorite baking books!

I want to make my way through the recipes, but not all of them. Sadly, here in Vienna, Austria we don´t get all the ingredience asked for in american and british baking books. For example we don´t have corn syrup (I´ll try to use honey), malted milk powder and whoopies...
However, today I was shopping and spotted in the last corner of my go to supermarked: Marshmallow fluff! How awesome is that?? Of course I bought one glass - let´s see what all the fuss is about!